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Mark J. Foster Presents OLPC Technology

10 Nov 2006

Do you follow One Laptop Per Child for the technology advances? Does the concept of 2x compression on the fly with a 512MB LPC NAND flash storage get you hot?

Might you know about the new 802.11G standard or that IEEE 802.11S mesh networking is in development? What about achieving a +3 dB gain by extending the wifi antennas on the top of a laptop? Then you might be a techno-geek.

At the beginning of October, as the Vice President, Engineering and Chief Architect of One Laptop Per Child and a leading computer portables expert, Mr. Foster spoke in detail about the technology behind the laptop.

From core architecture like NAND Flash, to mechanical design shown here, to mesh wifi connectivity, he delves into every aspect of the $100 laptopCM12B1 XO Children's Machine in an informative and yet understandable manner.

In fact, his speech is the most articulate and comprehensive explanation of the One Laptop Per Child program yet given. He makes complicated technology like reflective monochrome and transmissive color dual-mode displays easy to grasp for non-techies, yet intriguing for techno-geeks too.

The .asx file is a Windows Media streaming format, so it should work just fine in WMP. As far as I recall, this video is not available in any other format, sorry, but keep your eyes peeled for a transcript - I know there is one, just not whether its online as yet.